Wrong way! Go Back!

“Which way are you going?”

He’s a nice older man, who approached as we rested under a tree, eating the lunch thoughtfully packed by Carolyn, our host at Grove Cottage in Bloomfield. The conversation has gone the normal kind of way … where have you come from … where are you going …

I point up the road we’ve just turned into. “That way.”

He smiles, a kind gentle smile and says “No you’re not.”

I look at him quizzically.

”The bridge is out.”

He then proceeds to give us directions for a detour around this missing bridge.

Detours are the bane of cycle touring. All your carefully laid plans can go out the window, and you never know how much it is going to add to your day.

Today is full enough. Our original route was a 97km route, but with some careful re-routing, Neil cut about 5km out of it. Those 5km could make all the difference at the end of a long day.

The morning has gone well so far. We left Grove Cottage with full bellies after a breakfast of stewed rhubarb, asparagus and goat cheese frittata, and freshly-baked scones. Carolyn sent us off with extra frittata and scones, and ice-cold water in our bottles. We rode through the pretty countryside of Prince Edward county, mostly past places we’d visited yesterday by taxi.

The only downer for the day is that our un-friend the wind is back with a vengeance, right in our faces. The going has been a little hard, but we’ve done 40km already, and we’re about to change direction, which should help with the wind.

Or maybe we are not changing direction?

Neil goes off to the local shop to get a cold drink, and I tell him to ask at the shop about the bridge. Not that I don’t believe the kindly old man, but I just don’t want to believe him.

While Neil is gone, another man comes out of a nearby shop for a smoke. We go through the same conversation again about where we are from, where we are  going … then I ask about the bridge.

”Yep,” he says. “Been out for a while. Supposed to be fixed a month ago, but …” he shrugs his shoulders.

Damn! Somehow we missed signs on main road before we’d turned. It’s at least 10km from here to the bridge. Thank goodness somebody told us!

We head back to the road we were on, and traffic is banked up at the swing bridge that is still in place on this road – route 33 in Prince Edward County, at the delightfully named village of Carrying Place.

On the other side of the bridge a dirt road follows the canal we were going to cross further down on the non-existant bridge. We try it out. The surface is hard, and it seems OK – better than the suddenly busy route 33. If we follow this dirt road, we’ll come up on the other side of teh bridge, and be able to resume our original route.

We barely make it for one kilometre. The road starts getting pot-holed and bumpy. Another couple of cyclists come from the other way, and tell us the road turns to quagmire in the other direction. They’ve given up and turned around. We do the same. Looks like it is traffic and wind for us today.

The detour takes us around, and on to route 2, which we will follow for the rest of the day. We still have somewhere between 40 and 50km to go. The wind is fierce. Gah!

I console myself by thinking about how amazing Neil and I are doing this trip. Everybody we talk to – and that’s plenty, because no matter where we stop somebody approaches to chat, curious about us – people tell us we are amazing. The distance we’re covering. The stuff we’re carrying. Quebec City to Niagara Falls – that’s so far, how amazing.

And then we see this:

We are no longer amazing. We are amateurs. These people are the real deal. They are a French couple, travelling with their two children. One on the back of Dad’s bike, token-pedalling, and one in the trailer hooked to Mum’s bike. The bikes theselves are laden with bags, and solar panels. They are travelling from Quebec to South America. Over one and a half years. I just can’t imagine it.

We meet them first at the road side, where they are taking a break, and stop to check that they are OK. They pass us when we are taking a break, and then I think we are never going to catch them … they are going to the same place as us tonight – Cobourg. Though I suspect while we are bunkering down in our cool and comfortable B&B tonight, they will be unloading kids, putting up tents, and cooking a campside diner.

We eventually pass them again when they are taking a break, and make our way … finally … into Cobourg. We pull up at MacKechnie House, desperate for a shower, a beer and dinner. It’s been a very long day – the longest on the trip – and we are both done.

The road is really quite dull – leaving aside the damned wind. We are following the “Waterfront Route” but there is not really any water in sight, even though at times we are pretty close to Lake Ontario. Much of the lake shore is privately owned, and there are houses and business stacked in front of the views. It is all a bit misleading, and a long way from the cycle path I imagined that followed the lake shore line.

Cobourg is a surprising little town. I hadn’t expected much of it, but it has an impressive huge town hall, a lively main street, and is close to the waterfront, where there is a beach (on Lake Ontario). I suspect the beach is man made, but it is lovely to walk by after dinner.

We eat at a tapas restaurant. It is the best we can do to satisfy my craving for Mexican food. But they have margaritas – the hand-mixed kind. I have three maple margaritas. It had to be done, and really, they were good!

Our B&B is lovely. I didn’t really see much of it in the early rush to clean up and get out to find beer and food. We are upgraded to a room with a private verhanda overlooking the garden. And the room is beautifully air conditioned.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 98.14km
• Climb: 435m
• Average speed: 18.2km/h
• Average temperature: 29C
• Moving time: 5:22:48
• See our ride on Strava

The beer picture

At the end of a day’s ride, our tradition is to enjoy a beer, and to photograph it for posterity. Today’s beer picture was taken at the local spanish tapas place in Cobourg. And shock horror (!) one of the beers is not a beer – it is a maple margarta. It had to be had. And it was good.

Along the way today:

Not a lot today. We were battling winds, not wielding cameras. And really, after Carrying Place, it was a long and rather uninteresting road.